thursday is sai baba day.

back in Delhi. get off the air china plane (no individual tvs, surly flight attendants) and it smells like India. Walk to the check in, board the escalator and almost immediately get tangled in the melee at the bottom. 2 hours later and we're checked in after much jostling and general disbelief. Ah, India. No matter how many signs proclaiming that this situation is temporary, it's hard not to believe otherwise. Yesterday we wanted to see Om Shanti Om, a real bollywood movie right here in India with SRK, number one hottie. We ask for help and a kind toothless Indian gentleman and a woman whose Indian accent sounded suspiciously like Smita's directed us toward the number 500 bus. "This is in very nice area, you should go there. It should take half hour." We board the bus and toothless man reappears through the window, "this seat is for senior citizens only" he smiles and gestures. Boards the bus and gives us plenty of directions, at one point lightly slaps my cheek, for being a rapscallion, I guess. The story rolls on: throughout the night we manage to miss 3 movies, take 5 rickshaw rides, be in the same mall as Aamir Khan (whose presence causes all movies to be cancelled), get dinner for free from some sai baba fans on the side of the road, have a rickshaw breakdown, switch rickshaws to ride with someone who mysteriously speaks japanese as well as english and hindi and finally make it back to where we started right as the final movie is beginning only to be told that no bags are allowed in the theatre. no lockers, no submitting to a bag check. we collapse into hysterics as our japanese speaking friend ushers us back into the rickshaw for the final ride of the evening, home. No wonder Indian fiction is so damn good.

totemo iidesu-nee!

Saturday night- 8pm. just checked in to brand new capsule hostel, slightly disappointed that capsules are not actually enclosed tube-like structures, rather, they are nice little mini-rooms. I am experiencing a twinge of sadness to leave Kyoto, a place that rapidly zoomed to the top of my list. I love the teeny tiny bars piled on top of each other in unassuming buildings off alleyways that we spent three nights exploring, staying out till 5am on a wednesday and finding people on the streets even as we made our way home. The zen temple that has a 700 year old garden filled with moss and carp so contemplative that they stay completely still. The bike path along a river that is visited by cranes and crossed on large turtle shaped stones. The best meal I may have ever had made in an unassuming restaurant, with food so fresh and delicious that sometimes I laughed when I first tasted it. And real live geishas. I glimpsed two luminescent figures whiz by in a human pulled rickshaw and saw one exiting a job in the Gion neighborhood, where tea houses have played host to wealthy men being entertained by geishas since the 18th century. The combination of history, beauty, energy and care in every thing I have experienced here makes me love Japan more and realize how my outlook has changed since I was 16, when I first came here. Its nice to know that I had some inkling that this place appealed to me in a special way and now that I have grown up I can appreciate the style of living here and wonder if 16 year old me had some special insight. A question I am sure I will continue to ponder as I re-explore Tokyo for the next few days.

Fukuoka

In the Apple store using free internet. It is the Christmas season and the decorations show it. My Japanese is terrible, no surprise there, but I have fun reading what I can and trying to remember basic stuff. The boat was a nice 40 hour ride, lots of reading, very little interaction with others, little movement, some karaoke. Japan is so nice and orderly. The sushi is delicious and so fresh. Fukuoka is filled with fashionable people, canals, interesting architecture and lots of vending machines. Ok, off to explore.

pictures?

that's the horse head we shared a ride with.

Me next to a typical Mongolian religious thing that if it wasn't 7am after a night bus ride i could be more eloquent about.

mongolia, take 2

here i am in erlian, a soul-less border town that seems to fade into endless desert. unlike last time i was here i know when we leave and what to expect when we get into beijing, which is nice. being back in china means no more mutton, but i know i haven't strayed too far from mongolia since a guy next to me is looking at porn online, dirty pictures with the mongolian flag in the background. ah, the complicated nature of national pride. i just tried to post some pictures, but it made the computer shut down so you will have to make do with my words. some mongolian highlights:
- gers look boring from the outside, canvass structures often plopped down in the middle of nowhere, but it turns out that the insides are generally colorful and warm (if there's enough coal to make it through the night).
- there are not a lot of roads in mongolia. even the drive from UB to Kharkorin (the past and future? capital) is done mostly off road. this is generally delightful, except that sometimes you feel a little adrift in the middle of a desert with camels, yaks and sheep roaming around with seemingly more direction than the vehicle you're in.
- our last ride from Kharkorin to UB included the 3 of us, some mongolians who immediately busted out the beer for the ride, a horse head that came into close contact with my bag (hopefully while frozen), lots more meat in bags and a two hour ramble through town before departure to pick up people and their meat.
- there are a few national mongolian songs and they are played everywhere all the time.
- life in a former soviet semi-state is way different than other places that i've been. most obviously due to extensive vodka consumption. life seems more open than in China, you can access what you want on the internet and nothing is deemed "too sexy" for TV, but there is also not the same feeling of hope and opportunity.

more to come, hopefully with pictures at some point.